New Vicente's supermarket to boost Brockton corner

Monday

BROCKTON – For two decades, the large, vacant building and parking lot at the corner of Pleasant Street and Warren Avenue served as nothing more than a blight for the neighborhood.

Motorists traveling through the gateway to downtown Brockton saw a distressed corner, located across the street from a church and other businesses. The corner was long known as a spot for drugs and crime. The city’s homeless were often seen lying on pavement, day and night, near a boarded-up building.

“There were narcotics transactions. Many things have taken place there over the 20-plus years it’s been uninhabited,” Brockton police Lt. Kenneth LeGrice said Monday.

The new, $14.5 million Vicente’s Tropical Supermarket on Pleasant Street, which is slated to open on Thursday, “is going to do a lot to clean up that area and make it a positive place for the city,” LeGrice said.

The new, 32,000-square-foot supermarket with gleaming floors and shelves will inject life and commerce into what had become a barren urban location for years, city officials and business owners said.

“It’s awesome, like a breath of fresh air,” said Joe Angelo, owner of Joe Angelo’s Cafe & Deli and a member of the Downtown Business Association. “It’s going to be cleaning up that corner, getting a good Brockton business in there.”

The new Vicente’s will be joined by an $8 million outpatient clinic run by the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, which is slated to open in September. Together, they are expected to revitalize a long-blighted corner of Brockton, vacant for most of the past 20 years.

Mayor Bill Carpenter said Thursday’s opening of the new Vicente’s will be a “benchmark day” in the ongoing revitalization of the downtown business district.

“This is another key piece of the puzzle,” Carpenter said.

The new Vicente’s is the culmination of a dream that began when Manuel Vicente first opened a small grocery store in Brockton 21 years ago.

The specialty grocer has since grown into a thriving, full-service supermarket. Vicente’s supermarket at 689 Main St., with 105 employees, will remain in business when the new location opens. The new supermarket at 160 Pleasant St. will have 140 employees, officials said.

Vicente’s will open on a parcel of land with a long history. It was once a shoe factory, became a department store and was then an A&P market during the 1970s, officials said.

It later became a Star Market. Then, when Shaw’s Supermarket purchased the business about 20 years ago, Shaw’s decided not to operate the market at Pleasant and Warren and instead let it sit empty.

For years, the city tried to encourage development there, but projects kept falling through, said Ward 2 Councilor Thomas Monahan, in whose ward the property is located. Others have said a long-term lease held by a New York-based owner finally expired, allowing this project to move ahead.

“This is really going to improve that neighborhood. It’s going to beautify that neighborhood. It’s going to make it safer,” Monahan said.

Councilor-at-large Moises Rodrigues praised the Vicente family for investing their business in Brockton and providing jobs for local residents.

“It’s a beautiful facility. They’ve put their heart and soul into it,” Rodrigues said. “Vicente’s and his team should be commended for taking that initiative. They were willing to take a chance and invest a serious amount of resources to help this community and revitalize that area.”

Angelo said he will do much of his shopping at the new Vicente’s, which has “great product, unbelievable produce.”

“It’s just a great success story for the Cape Verdean community and all of Brockton,” Angelo said. “I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait.”

Reach Maria Papadopoulos at mpapa@enterprisenews.com.

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